ICIJ re­moves ...

base” with in­for­ma­tion on over 200,000 off­shore en­ti­ties, in­clud­ing names of over 200 Pak­ista­nis, on May 9. The data­base which is likely to be the largest ever re­lease of se­cret off­shore com­pa­nies and the peo­ple be­hind them, will be­come pub­lic on May 9, 2pm EDT, ICIJ re­ported.

The in­ter­ac­tive data­base will also in­clude in­for­ma­tion about more than 100,000 ad­di­tional com­pa­nies that were part of the 2013 ICIJ Off­shore Leaks in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

While the data­base opens up a world that has never been re­vealed on such a mas­sive scale, the ap­pli­ca­tion will not be a “data dump” of the orig­i­nal doc­u­ments – it will be a care­ful re­lease of ba­sic cor­po­rate in­for­ma­tion, a state­ment on the web­site said.

While there is a pos­si­bil­ity that names of more Pak­ista­nis may or may not ap­pear on the data­base, ICIJ stated, it “won’t re­lease per­sonal data en masse; the data­base will not in­clude records of bank ac­counts and fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions, emails and other cor­re­spon­dence, pass­ports and tele­phone num­bers.”

“The se­lected and lim­ited in­for­ma­tion is be­ing pub­lished in the pub­lic in­ter­est,” the state­ment added.

Gov­ern­ments across the world mounted sweep­ing probes into al­le­ga­tions made as part of a mas­sive leak of front com­pa­nies be­ing set up by a Panama-based firm on be­half of sev­eral prom­i­nent global per­son­al­i­ties and lead­ers, many of whom de­nied any wrong­do­ing.

The leak, dubbed ‘Panama Papers’ and com­pris­ing some 11.5 mil­lion doc­u­ments cov­er­ing four decades from the Panama-based law firm Mos­sack Fon­seca, showed how some of the world’s most pow­er­ful peo­ple took their money off­shore.

Pre­mier Nawaz on Fri­day said he would re­sign if any wrong­do­ing is proven against him be­fore the com­mis­sion formed to in­ves­ti­gate off­shore wealth in the wake of Panama Papers rev­e­la­tions. “I chal­lenge those ac­cus­ing me of wrong­do­ing to prove that be­fore the com­mis­sion and if any­thing is proved, I will step down with­out any de­lay,” Nawaz Sharif said while ad­dress­ing the na­tion.